99% of QIMC's New Nova Scotia Soil Stations Show Wet Thermogenic Gas

Nearly every soil station Quebec Innovative Materials sampled in September around New Salem and Apple River, Nova Scotia, carried the chemical fingerprint of gas formed deep underground, the company reported on October 26, 2026. The company said the strongest readings lie inside the area of the seismic survey it completed on October 14, which is now being processed.

The release is the third step in four weeks on the same ground. On October 6 the company reported a wet-gas signature in 86 per cent of an earlier soil-gas set, and on October 14 it finished a 63.7 line-kilometre seismic survey across the district.

The new set covers eight lines, 13.9 line-kilometres in all, sampled every 100 metres. All of it lies inside the seismic footprint. The thermogenic share rose to 99 per cent.

The company and the ground it is testing

QIMC, listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, explores for natural hydrogen and critical minerals in eastern Canada and Minnesota, according to its own description. Natural hydrogen is hydrogen gas generated by rock-water reactions underground, as opposed to hydrogen manufactured from natural gas or by electrolysis.

The Nova Scotia work is in the Cumberland Basin, on a corridor running east from Apple River to Port Greville. At Bennett Hill the company drilled DDH-26-05, where on September 1 it reported a headspace hydrogen concentration of 30.0 per cent and free gas reaching surface during drilling. A headspace reading measures the gas collected in a sealed sample jar, so it gives a concentration and says nothing yet about how much gas a well could deliver. The company said at the time that those observations were not a flow, formation-pressure or reservoir test.

The strategy, in the words of the October 26 release, is that hydrogen, helium and natural gas in the district appear to share common structures, so one programme "advances a single pilot production pathway rather than three separate exploration efforts." The company also states that it does not use and does not contemplate hydraulic fracturing or reservoir stimulation.

The new set is wetter, and more uniform, than the last

Soil-gas sampling draws gas from a shallow probe and measures the light hydrocarbons in it. The ratio between them carries the signal. Methane forms both from microbes near the surface and from organic matter cooked at depth. The heavier gases, ethane up to butane, come mainly from the deep, heat-driven process geologists call thermogenic.

The release uses two standard measures. The wetness index is the share of the heavier gases in the total, expressed as a percentage. The Bernard ratio divides methane by ethane plus propane, and low values point to thermogenic gas. The new set has a median Bernard ratio of 14, and the release places every value within the thermogenic wet-gas field of that classification. The other figures are in the table.

Methane in ordinary air runs at about 1.7 to 2.0 parts per million by volume, the release notes, so most of these stations sit above that baseline. One stands far above it. One station on line 6033 read 1,287 ppmv, with its two neighbours well below.

The tighter spread matters as much as the higher share. In the company's words, the consistency "confirms that the system is continuous rather than localized." The company reads chemistry that repeats from line to line, in both its New Salem and Apple River sectors, as the signature of a connected source. It also lets the company rank targets inside the seismic grid by the strength of the signal.

Line 6000A ran anomalous for four kilometres

The longest new line is the one the company leads with. Line 6000A runs four kilometres, and two-thirds of its stations read above 5 ppmv methane. It also carried the programme's highest ethane.

Chief executive John Karagiannidis said in the release that the line "is anomalous for four straight kilometres." For an explorer, a continuous anomaly along a single traverse is useful because it can be laid over a seismic line and checked against the faults the seismic images.

Helium readings sit on the same lines

Helium in soil gas is measured against the air, which carries about 5.240 ppmv. On September 22 the company published a regional background of 5.40 ppmv and an anomaly threshold of 5.48 ppmv, and the new results are judged against them.

Four stations crossed the threshold, three of them on line 6000A. The highest, 5.573 ppmv, came from the station that carried the methane peak. Seven of the ten highest helium values in the dataset came from line 6000A.

Those are small differences in absolute terms, and they are the scale at which soil-gas helium is read. Helium is light and escapes upward along faults, so a reading a few hundredths of a part per million above background, repeated along one line, is the kind of surface signal explorers use to place faults that may connect to a deeper source. Line 6000A carrying both the strongest helium set and the highest ethane is the multi-gas pattern the company has described since October 6.

GeoFrontiers Corporation, an independent laboratory in Texas, ran the hydrocarbon analyses by gas chromatography and also reported the helium. A separate independent laboratory is running isotope analyses, which can distinguish thermogenic from microbial gas more directly than ratios can.

The seismic grid ties surface chemistry to structure

The October 14 release reported that Echo Seismic Ltd. had completed two-dimensional seismic across the district between Apple River and Port Greville. Two-dimensional seismic sends sound into the ground along a line and records the echoes, producing a cross-section of the rock layers and faults beneath it. The survey was planned at about 50 line-kilometres and lengthened after the company identified new targets.

Earth Signal Processing Ltd. of Calgary is processing the data. Every new soil-gas line falls inside the survey, so each new anomaly can be placed against a processed section as the sections arrive. The company says testing continues at DDH-26-05, which its October 14 release tied to the Bennett Hill seismic line.

Across the programme the company cites more than 10,000 soil-gas samples and over 3,500 metres of drill core, alongside gravity and magnetic surveys. For a junior explorer that is a large dataset to bring to one basin, and it describes the stage the work has reached, with surface chemistry and structure mapped and one drill hole that has returned gas.

C$14.1 million in cash at the last balance sheet

The interim statements for the nine months ended June 30, 2026, the latest the company has filed, show cash and cash equivalents of C$14,127,210 at June 30, 2026, against C$794,701 at September 30, 2025. The rise came mostly from a private placement of units at C$0.90 that closed on April 27, 2026 for gross proceeds of C$17,250,345, according to the share capital note of the same statements.

The same statements show 156,054,801 shares outstanding at June 30, 2026.

Note 1 of those statements says the company's circumstances indicate "a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt" on its ability to continue as a going concern. Exploration and evaluation spending, C$2,045,251 for the nine months, is expensed as incurred. The autumn field work falls after that balance-sheet date and will appear in the annual statements for the year ended September 30, 2026.

The shares closed at C$0.38 on October 26, down C$0.04 or 9.52 per cent, on 1,043,678 shares traded on the CSE, per end-of-day data read at 13:58 Pacific on October 26, 2026.

The shares also trade in Frankfurt under the symbol 7FJ, WKN A3D2JV and ISIN CA7480331072, according to the company's release and Börse Stuttgart's listing page.

The district is wider, and the next proof is at depth

The new set widens the company's surface case in Nova Scotia. The thermogenic share rose from 86 to 99 per cent, and line 6000A carries helium and wet gas together along four kilometres, all inside a seismic survey already in processing.

The right-hand column is the release's own statement of its bounds. Interest in natural hydrogen as a resource has official backing beyond the company: the US Geological Survey published its first map of potential for geologic hydrogen in the lower 48 states on January 16, 2025, a national screen of US ground that does not cover Nova Scotia.

The company has not given dates for its next steps. They are the processed sections from Earth Signal Processing in Calgary, the isotope results and continued testing at DDH-26-05, and they now build on thermogenic gas and helium mapped across 147 new stations inside a completed seismic grid, beside a drill hole that has returned hydrogen.